Rabbit News & Awareness

Let the info hop to you!

Tag: humane

Last year PETA released a horrifying video of angora rabbits being tortured en mass for the sake of fashion. The video is too upsetting for me to post but you can see it here.

Angora Agony

It is estimated there are around 50 million rabbits farmed in China for angora fur and the country accounted for 90 per cent of the 4,700 tons produced in 2012.

Angora ‘wool’ cannot be harvested humanely in the vast quantities needed for designer or high street fashion. Both plucking and shaving of live rabbits is stressful, scary and painful and ultimately unnecessary. Add to this, the awful living conditions these poor creatures have to endure and it culminates in a hideous existence just for the sake of fashion.

I contacted a wide range of high street and designer fashion stores last year asking them a few questions about how and where they source their angora. I also asked them to stop using it and to pledge to NEVER sell it again. Im pleased to say I had a good uptake and the following retailers pledged to never / no longer stock angora:

ASOS

Boden

Borgeois Boheme

Calvin Klein

Dunelm

Elizabetta Italian Scarves, Shawls & Wraps

Freemans

Feelgood Handbags

Gap

H&M

Mango

New Look

Polarn O. Pyret

Stella McCartney

The Range

Ted Baker

Timberland

Tommy Hilfiger

The North Face

QVC

Im pleased to say that ALL of the above companies have stayed true to their word! And many other large retainers have done the same. Please support these retailers and contact them with messages of praise 🙂

However – not everyone is willing to play nice and too many retailers are preferring to put fashion before welfare.

Many companies have tried to be clever and disable the word ‘angora’ in their search bar on their website. Meaning that it would appear that they do not stock angora clothes but if you dig deeper and look at individual items, then angora products are actually still being sold. Others have decided to change the materials listed to ‘wool mix’ in order to disguise the use of angora.

Marks & Spencers and Topshop may still be selling angora – PETA says they have pledged to stop but the companies social media responses say they have an ‘ethical sourcing policy’ – so they wont confirm that that do or don’t sell angora.

The worst companies so far…

French Connection clearly dont give a FCUK about rabbits – quite hypocritical really considering they decided to use a cute bunny in their recent store posters! They will not enter into any dialogue with me or many of the others that have contacted them.

FCUK Angora via Twitter

Monsoon are happy to respond to questions via social media…however they just cut and paste the same answer over and over. They state they use ‘humane’ farms but refuse to give any further details.

Jules are another company that happily use the rabbit / hare image for promotion – yet continue to stock angora products and refuse to answer my questions about their suppliers and sourcing methods.

There are of course, other companies out there providing angora products but these 3 have been the worst with regards to replying to my questions over the past year.

If you feel that the agony of angora for fashion should be stopped then please consider doing one or all of the following:

Email.
You can contact the companies directly via a head office email to ask the same questions.

In Store.
Ask to speak to a manager to ask the same questions. They may not know the answers but should be able to tell you which of their stock (if any) contains angora and give you contact details of head office.

Boycott!
Obviously – don’t shop in stores that sell angora products and check the labels before making any purchases.

Spread the word!
Lastly – help make a difference by spreading the word that angora clothes = torture not fashion. You can join the Facebook group ‘Against Angora Cruelty’ to keep up to date with the campaign.